Pew: readers prefer ad-supported news to pay walls

According to a new report out of the Pew Research Center, a heavy majority of …

Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there's a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons."

First things first: Pew notes that last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002. Numbers from eMarketer said that revenues fell by a total of $1 billion between 2008 and 2009. Still, a full 81 percent of Internet surfers say they're cool with online ads if it means the content remains free, although "much of that is because they find them easy to ignore."

Further, 21 percent said they click on ads "at least sometimes"—much higher than we expected—and that number goes up when the user is more active. For example, among daily Internet surfers, 28 percent reported clicking on ads. For people who visit at least six sites per day, the click rate is as high as 37 percent.

The combined effect of lower ad impact and revenue has led many news sites to look for new ways to make some money, but the Pew report is not very optimistic on the prospects for other business models. Only seven percent of Americans said they would consider paying for news content and most said they would simply look for content elsewhere if their favorite site put up a pay wall.

When questioned about what possible models might be used over the next three years, a heavy majority of media firms said there would be some kind of hybrid model, merging advertising-supported content, on-demand content, free/premium tiers (which Ars Technica offers), or some kind of subscription service. Pew notes that, even though numerous companies are already experimenting with some of these mixed revenue streams, "[w]hat is fairly clear is that no one model will replace advertising as the major revenue source for news."

This report comes hot on the heels of our own ad blocking discussion here at Ars (and a followup on how to safely whitelist your favorite sites). We, like many other news sites, get paid by ad impressions (not so much clickthroughs), though we also offer a fairly popular subscriber program that not only lets readers go ad-free, but gives them access to some premium content.

One site's experience, however, is not the entire industry—there's still quite a ways to go before other means of revenue can replace advertising. It's clear from Pew's data that neither readers nor publishers are ready to make a major switch in the means of supporting the production of news and journalism. So for the time being, it looks like those ad views will remain king.